Here Be Monsters
by Dresden Blue
Summary: Dragons, mostly. In which Hermione overcomes her fear of flying, Loki guards his secrets closer than any golden egg, and Harry comes up with a few very bad ideas. Pre-Thor, set during the fourth book of HP. Harry's POV. Implied Loki/Hermione. Standalone oneshot companion to Aphelion. Giftfic for the 200th reviewer of Aphelion.


**HERE BE MONSTERS**

Dragons, mostly. In which Hermione overcomes her fear of flying, Loki guards his secrets closer than any golden egg, and Harry comes up with a very bad idea. Oneshot companion to Aphelion, though not a prerequisite. Set during the fourth book of HP and pre-Thor.. Harry's POV. Vague Loki/Hermione.

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"Dragons!" Hermione exclaimed, her face bright. "That's awful dangerous. Are you sure?"

Harry nodded. "I saw them myself," he insisted, keeping his voice down. The Common Room was empty except for the two of them this late at night-almost morning, really—but it wouldn't do for anyone else to hear. Not that it would matter much; no one seemed to believe a word out of his mouth these days. "Hagrid showed them to me earlier this evening to give me a bit of a warning, I think." _And to impress his lady friend_, he thought a bit sourly, but didn't mention that bit. Hermione had never shown the slightest inclination in romance other than something to snub her nose at; it seemed like the one subject she _didn't_ want to learn more about. She'd think even mentioning such a thing a waste of time.

The next words that popped out of her mouth were almost as frightening as the dragons themselves. "I'd like to see them," she announced, as if planning a trip to the Astronomy tower to observe some stellar phenomenon for extra credit. "I've always been fascinated by them. It's physically impossible for them to fly, you know, if you look at the ratio betw-"

"They'd burn any notes you'd try to take," Harry interrupted, a smile twitching at his face despite the anxiety pressing insistently at his gut. "I doubt they've developed a fondness for researchers, being tethered down all day."

"I can make myself fireproof," Hermione said airily. "Shouldn't be too difficult."

"Oh?" Harry's mind still hadn't quite wrapped around the thought of facing off with _dragons_ for the First Task, but being firepoof seemed like a good start.

"I'll have to go the library and figure out how first, of course," Hermione continued, inadvertently crushing Harry's hopes of an easy solution. She was getting that look in her eyes, that one she got whenever she talked about going to the library. One would think she was running off to get a good snog, she got so excited _Except Hermione doesn't snog, and I don't either_, he thought bitterly to himself.

A thought struck him. Staying alive was all well and good, but it'd be an added bonus if he could impress some folks. Look like he properly belonged in the Tournament and not just some scruffy interloper. Maybe Cho would notice him, if he managed to outwit a dragon... "Sure," he said, pushing his glasses back up onto his nose. "When do you want to go?"

"Tonight!" she exclaimed happily, then caught the horrified expression on his face and rolled her eyes. "You don't have to come," she continued on kindly. "I know you have to be awfully tired right now, and I _did_ promise you I'd help in any way I can. Spending a little extra time in the library is the least I can do. I can tell you all about what I figure out after breakfast. Sound good?"

Hermione popped out of her chair like it was high noon and gave him a close hug that squeezed the breath out of him and almost his anxiety with it. _Closest thing I __ever__ get to a snog_, he thought a bit mournfully in some corner of his head, then thought of Ron sulking, always on the edge of his vision during meals, classes... _Closest thing I have to a friend right now too_.

Harry hugged her back the best he could and closed his eyes, burying his nose in the warm soft chaos of smooth skin, cashmere sweater and bushy hair where her neck met her shoulder. Trust the scary girl with the brains. Always a good plan. It had worked the last thee years, with the Philosopher's Stone, with the Basilisk, with Buckbeak and Sirius...

...except later that night, tossing and turning in the vast lonely cavelike expanse of his canopied bed, his mind kept turning back to the dragons he had seen, the fires burning blindingly bright in the dark of the woods where no one had been supposed to see them until it would have been too late to even _think_ about how to face them. Every time he'd just start to slip into sleep he'd imagine what it must be like to burn to death, surrounded by something so fatally lovely as dragonfire while Dumbledore and McGonagall and Moody and all his other professors shook their heads sadly in the stands.

He wouldn't be sleeping tonight. Not when he didn't how the bloody hell he'd get himself out of this without turning into a crispy snack in front of Cho, Fleur, Viktor and Cedric and all those other thoroughly intimidating folks he was supposed to be somehow impressing.

So Harry slipped out of his bed, looking regretfully over at Ron's happily snoring form as he put his shoes and socks on. Normally he'd love to include Ron in his midnight adventures, even if it was just to go visit Hermione in the library and bang his head against the wall some more while she did the _real_ work_,_ but—well. Ron didn't want a thing to do with him right now, and that likely included being woken at three in the morning.

Harry tugged the Invisibility Cloak over himself and stuffed the Marauder's Map and his wand into his back pockets. Not now. Angst, _off_. How was he supposed to be brave in front of dragons if he couldn't even brave his own friends? He very firmly set off, taking the steps down and out of the dormitory two at a time.

How Hermione managed to sneak about so willy-nilly had been the subject of some speculation, particularly after he had realized just how much sneaking she would have had to do last year in order to keep all her extra classes enabled by the Time Turner a secret. Hermione was frightfully good at duplicity, like she was frightfully good at most things. Harry's breath still caught every time Filch or some prefect heard his footsteps, even if he _knew_ they couldn't see him; how did she manage it so casually?

Maybe he'd have Hermione teach him whatever her trick was and then sneak up on the dragon. Not nearly as impressive as walking as boldly as can be being fireproof, but perhaps more likely to keep him alive.

Finding Hermione would normally be tricky business, but he thought it emergency enough to use the Marauder's Map and violate her privacy a tiny bit. She wouldn't mind, she _had_ invited him to come with her earlier, and besides—she was always so impossible to find in the library – he never really had any idea of where she'd get off to, though it made a certain amount of sense that she'd want to be alone with her books given how much he'd bother her when she was in the Common Room.

Her name was one of the few not in the dormitories, and he spotted her quickly enough deep in the depths of the library, certainly deeper than he had ever been—but she wasn't alone. A _Loki Laufeyson _was next to her.. Harry frowned at the name. To be honest, he mostly liked that wizards tended to pick more interesting names than _Bob_ or _Dudley, _but naming one after what he vaguely remembered to be a god of lies or some such seemed rather unkind. No worse than _Severus_, he supposed.

Still, strange. Not a name he recognized. One of the Durmstrang students, perhaps? Harry tugged his cloak a little tighter around him and strode off in the direction of Hermione and her companion. He couldn't imagine anyone really properly threatening her, not after she had hexed Snape clear through a wall in the Shrieking Shack last year, but he didn't like the idea of anyone giving her trouble, especially on his behalf. Moody had warned him to watch his back, and certainly hurting Hermione would be the same as hurting him... He quickened his pace.

He didn't hear a thing until he was nearly on top of the names on the parchment, and then he nearly dropped the Map in surprise. Laughter? Hermione was comfortably chatting in a chair across from what must have been one of the Durmstrang students, a fellow whose hard white face appeared almost sculpted, the crisp clean lines of his jaw and cheekbones giving him the appearance of aristocracy, a sense that was supported by elegant black robes and a clear ringing voice that ran smooth like water in summer past Harry's ears. Still, for such a stony face, it seemed to break easily into all sorts of smiles around Hermione, small sly ones like s sliver of crystal, broad ones that seemed to split his face in two, ones that'd flicker like a shadow and be gone again when you looked twice. Above all, he seemed rather mercurial, like something that would slip between your fingers and become something else entirely when you caught it next, even in the few scant moments Harry had been observing him thus far.

There was a towering stack of books between them, mostly untouched. They appeared to be too caught up in their conversation to notice. The thought of Hermione _forgetting _ she had books to read was a foreign one to Harry.

Almost as foreign as seeing her flirt. "We could make it a date," Hermione said, eyes sparkling as she addressed Loki. Harry blanched, quite grateful that neither of them seemed to be aware of his presence thus far. He had never seen her give that sort of look to _anyone_ before; it reminded him a bit of Angelina and Fred (or George, Harry was never quite clear), full of a happy sharpness. "Merlin knows I get out of this castle rarely enough."

A slow smile curved across—Loki's—face. He was very handsome, but still, there was a bitter sadness just beneath the surface that seemed like it preferred to stay there, as a wounded creature might crawl off to die in a cave. Harry wasn't all that good with reading people, not like Hermione or Dumbledore, but Loki's face was deeply expressive. He wondered if it looked anything like this when Loki _wasn't_ around Hermione. She did have the wonderful ability to make people feel safe, something Harry had taken advantage of countless times over the past few years. Did Loki, too, need a friend? Harry's gut twisted into knots. "Not worried about getting caught? I must be corrupting you." There was a touch of tease to his tone, something Hermione didn't abide by easily even in her friends.

True to form, she held her chin high, but there was a humor in her response as well. "I don't fancy idea of getting caught with the likes of _you_, no. I'm not sure if Harry would ever forgive me."

"Ah," Loki said, "Loyalty. How sweet."

Harry frowned. No, he wasn't exactly pleased that she seemed to be sneaking off to the library to have a secret rendezvous with some male friend, but why did she think he'd be... mad? Something unpleasant churned in his chest.

Hermione flicked her wand and a little flicker of blue fire flew at Loki, which he batted away with a casual ease that reminded Harry very much of a cat. "I like my friends," Hermione said airily. 'You're lucky I do, otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here right now."

"You'd never leave," Loki shot back. What was going on? "If there's anything we can't abide it's being _bored_."

"Harry keeps me on my toes plenty," Hermione replied, smiling a bit. "Like it or not, I won't be bored if you decide to swan off to seduce some other damsel. Good luck finding someone else to hang off your arm in the library around here. I, for one, am perfectly satisfied with getting him out of trouble every so often. Weren't you just complaining that I didn't have enough practical experience with life-or-death situations?" Harry decided he didn't like it when she joked so casually about him. It didn't sound like her at all, not the Hermione Harry knew.

"Impudent wench," Loki said, with a strange sort of fondness. Hermione flicked another bit of flame at him, which he simply _absorbed_ into his hand somehow. "Don't you have some book you want to read first?"

"When I have a self proclaimed master of dragons right here?" Hermione smiled more sweetly than Harry had ever seen. If it wasn't _her_ name so clearly emblazoned on the map, he'd suspect Polyjuice potion. "Let's go. Sod the books. I can read them tomorrow with Harry."

"Now?"

"Now," Hermione affirmed, standing up and pointedly depositing the unread book on her lap onto the table between them. "Life is short, or so you keep telling me, and my classes are dull. Teach me all about dragons."

Loki rose, his robes pooling around him like a sort of dark waterfall. He was quite tall, and his frame leaner than Harry would have guessed for the gravity with which he held himself. "My lady," Loki murmured, and she led him away.

Harry would follow, of course. He didn't really have much of a choice, with anxiety and even a slip of fear twisting like snakes in his stomach. It was that or face them now with a thousand questions he somehow doubted they'd be inclined to answer, or return to his bed in Gryffindor to wait the long hours until breakfast, when he'd have to look into her face and figure out for himself what was going on. He didn't like sneaking about, the Cloak had never really suited him, but here he had to swallow that Gryffindor pride a bit, bitter and sour like bile.

Harry did his best to steady his breath, hoping to whatever gods might be listening that his heart was beating too loud. For an agonizing moment he could have sworn Loki had turned and _winked_ at him, but then the pair simply disappeared from sight. Surely, if Loki had somehow seen through the Cloak, Harry would be the one subjected to questioning, and probably at two wandpoints. Hermione was _terrifying_ when upset, and Harry had a sneaking suspicion that this would upset her very much indeed.

Using the Marauder's Map, Harry was able to follow the pair of them through tunnels that were (mostly) on the Marauder's Map, though there were a few secret passages he where he stumbled along and hoped they'd pop up again on the other side. Loki certainly seemed familiar enough with the castle; had Hermione shoved Hogwarts: A History under his nose, too, or had they been exploring the castle together after curfew like she had never seemed to want to with Harry or Ron?

Had they only just met this semester? Harry was doubting a bit at his Durmstrang-student hypothosis, particularly during the few times with Hermione flickered back into visibility and was almost affectionately lectured on how to hold the charm for longer periods by her companion. She sponged it up with an eagerness Harry found painfully reminiscent of her during their first year, when the mere existence of magic was still a novel thing. She had gotten more skeptical, critical since then, though he hadn't known her to be actively _bored_ until she had just said it a few minutes ago to her mysterious friend. He thought she had been doing her coursework in the library, though he was suspecting now that she just finished her homework in the Common Room before sneaking off to learn new things altogether. Insatiable. He felt a little stab of guilt hit him in the throat; he had hardly been very supportive of her love of knowledge except to use it to his own clumsy ends. No wonder she sought satisfaction elsewhere.

Still, she hadn't mentioned having any friends from Durmstrang before, maybe it was someone she had met while she had been on vacation in France that one summer, or they had stumbled into each other in Diagon Alley and had become pen pals... or something... It seemed strange to him that she wouldn't even mention someone else she was so close to—unless there was something to hide. And he already knew that Hermione was _very_ good at hiding things.

His head kept right on spinning with possibilities, each less plausible than the last, until they had gotten out of the castle completely undetected and had made it to the dragon's grove in the forest. Hermione and Loki both became visible, now, apparently comfortable in the assumption that no one else was around. Harry stuffed the Map away with relief. It had been positively _spooky_, he hadn't even been able to hear their footsteps...

"Dragons," Hermione breathed, staring at the sight before them. Harry's attention was rather forcibly turned towards the view when what he tentatively identified as the Hungarian Horntail blew out a mighty fireball that would have reduced any tree instantly into ash, had all vegetation for more than a hundred feet not already been cleared. The way the fire lit her face, then—there was something in her eyes that Harry didn't recognize in her at all. _Longing_. Since when she long after anything other than books and bytes of data?

Apparently since she had started seeing Loki. He certainly cut a dramatic figure with his lean lines and dark robes, silhouetted against the fires of four dragons that hissed in their cages like cats too great to be kept by anyone—yet here they were, _captured _and caught and Loki was smiling with something between delight and despair. Harry didn't understand a whit of what was going on, but he felt very deeply out of his depth. Still, there it was again, that thing so strangely like and unlike affection on Loki's face as he turned to look at Hermione. "Defining the obvious is oh-so-dull, my dear."

She shot Loki a quick look of irritation before turning back to face the sight before her. Despite the fact that Harry had been here a scant few hours before with Hagrid and his unladylike love, he had a hard time looking away even for something as bizarre as Hermione in love with something other than a book. The dragons were... awe-inspiring, in a sense of the word that Harry hadn't really felt anything else had been appropriate for before. Any of the four on their own would have terrified them on their own, but here, each in a cage facing each other but helpless to do anything other than _roar_, he worried very much for the strength of those bars.

Hence why the next thing that came out of his mouth horrified all the more. "Would you like to ride one?"

"Fly?!" At least _something_ Hermione said had made sense this evening.

"Yes," Loki said evenly, though his eyes were sparkling in amusement at Hermione's reaction, "fly. As a self proclaimed master of dragons, I'd declare it to be a jolly good time."

"How-?!" Hermione was sputtering a bit. It was oddly comforting to see her finally out of her comfort zone around that strange man. It rather seemed to Harry that Loki was trying to steal her away, and this did not sit well on his conscience.

Even if he _did_ make Hermione happier than Harry had ever thought possible. He had thought her some sort of ice princess, constantly criticizing those around her and never happy with how things were...

"By holding on _very_ tightly," Loki replied, as if he was talking about turning on the telly. "And some magic, if you want the ride to be a bit more comfortable. Dragons tend to be rather sharp creatures. They certainly don't like being ridden, and weren't designed for it anyway."

"Designed?" Hermione asked, then shook her head. "No, tell me later. I'm sure you've got some very interesting bit of history in that head of yours that our _mythology_ doesn't cover. How do you get them to—well, agree to it?" She looked a bit nervously as the four dragons, likely as aware as Harry that they wanted nothing more than to eat one of the humans that kept them locked there.

"It's similar to what your people call Legilimancy," Loki said, eyes shifting between Hermione and the dragons as if he couldn't decide what was more worthy of his concern. 'your people'? Loki didn't have much of an accent, but that supported the Durmstrang student hypothesis well enough. _Because Hermione couldn't find anyone intelligent enough for her at Hogwarts_, Harry thought to himself, with as much sadness as sourness. "Recall the lessons I had been giving you, in shielding your mind?"

Hermione nodded. Harry felt vaguely vindicated. At least it wasn't anything _too_ personal between the two of them. Hermione would take a lesson in something she didn't know from a jellyfish if she could figure out a way to communicate with it. Late night lessons in the library? Maybe it meant nothing to her. But that look in her eyes... "So, the reverse? What you had been doing, Legilimancy, except—more like projecting than just poking about. _Telling_ the dragon what to do."

Loki's smile twisted into something almost feral. For a fleeting moment he didn't look too unlike one of the dragons, deadly strong and _hungry_. "Yes," he said. "We _will_ it to do what we want. Power in its purest form. You forge a connection through the eyes at first, a tête-à-tête, a battle of minds. If your will is stronger, it will be—obedient, more or less."

"'More or less' with a dragon sounds rather fatal."

Loki shrugged. "So concerned about life and death. If you are truly the stronger of the two, you have nothing to fear."

"Some of us need to be concerned," Hermione shot back, though she was staring at the dragons again now, chewing her bottom lip thoughtfully.

"Some of us," Loki replied, "but not right now. You'll be safe. Trust in yourself, if not in me."

Hermione laughed, some of the anxiety easing out of her face. "I trust myself least of all around untrustworthy figures such as yourself," she said, "though we have another issue. How are we to free the dragons without garnering some unwanted attention? Wandering about invisible is one thing. I'm sure _someone_ will notice that a dragon or two has gone missing. I'd rather not tempt fate tonight."

Loki's smile now grew crooked. Did he ever stop smiling, at least around Hermione? Harry was finding it distinctly unsettling how fascinated they seemed to be with each other. There was something in their dynamic that didn't seem quite healthy, quite—_safe_, though Harry couldn't find the word for it any more than he could pin down what exactly made him uneasy about the two of them. "Fate is a mistress who likes mischief more than you might imagine," he said airily, then his smile by turn grew apologetic at the glare that Hermione sent him. "Perhaps the tomorrow, when they realize that one of their dragons has gone missing, they'll also notice that the lock on the cage was poorly crafted, that a good _shake_ could cause it to fall loose entirely. None of your innocents will be unjustly blamed: accidents happen, no?" He took a step towards Hermione. "Yes or no?"

Hermione's eyes, almost black in the dark, seemed to burn with a fire of their own. "Teach me," she said breathlessly.

Loki made a little bow. "As my lioness commands," he said, with only the barest hint of sarcasm. "Which dragon would you prefer?"

Hermione looked about, almost shy in her enthusiasm. After a few moments she pointed at a mid size one that was in the cage closest to them, perhaps fittingly the most lionlike of the dragons, all scarlet and gold with a fringe of spikes around its head like a mane. There was something more of a sharp intelligence in its eyes than the others, the way it had been _observing_ Loki and Hermione over the course of their conversation, pausing only to emit great fireballs into the sky. Fitting indeed. "That one," she said. "I think it's called a Chinese Fireball."

"What an unlovely name for such a beautiful creature," Loki said. "Your language is lacking in musicality."

_Bulgarian isn't a whole lot better_, Harry thought, thinking of all the harsh guttural sounds it seemed to consist of. Hermione seemed to agree; she was shaking her head. "Then what would you call it, in your own language?"

"_Her_," Loki corrected absently, "and I'd call her by her name. She's better than some ant." He was stepping closer to the dragon, step by slow step. His gaze, while previously intense enough, now seemed focused enough to _pierce_ whatever poor soul he decided to fixate on, but the dragon seemed to stare steadily back. Eventually Loki stopped a spare few feet from the cage. There was a tenseness to them both, a strange taut sort of string between them that was almost tangible in the power thrumming through it Harry watched, as fascinated as Hermione, as every muscle in the dragon seemed to _flex_ and a great ball of fire erupted from its—_her—_mouth. Hermione gasped as Loki was enveloped in the flames, but there was a weight sinking in Harry's chest when he realized how easily her friend had survived that. There wasn't even a flicker of shields, he had simply become...

impermeable, suddenly, his lean frame silhouetted in fires intense enough to melt diamonds and bright enough to half render Harry blind before he turned his eyes aside. Loki hadn't even flinched! Harry hadn't managed a quarter so well, against the Basilisk two years ago, the only remotely comparable creature he had ever faced before.

_What do they teach at Durmstrang?_ Harry thought to himself, feeling completely and thoroughly doomed by this whole Tournament.

He glanced over at Hermione. She was enraptured, like she was reading a good book, but—more so. He hadn't seen that before in her. Hadn't seen any of this. Not really. But there was apparently many things he hadn't known about her, like that her fear of flying was negotiable or that she smiled her happiest not when spoonfed some new tidbit of information but rather when she was challenged, someone to spar with. It wasn't always obvious to Harry or the rest of her apparently less-than-adequate friends why she wasn't in Ravenclaw, but here in the glade as she faced down the prospect of stepping into dragonfire herself it was written more clearly across her face than anything he had seen before, in every smile and laugh she had exchanged with her friend who dared to ride dragons as if taking an afternoon tea.

Harry felt sorely inadequate.

The dragon roared again, and this time the flame was so bright Harry couldn't even see Loki's slim body at all through it, shielding his eyes straightaway. He heard Hermione laughing this time, and burned into his retinas was her face, her eyes, her flyaway hair, lit by fires so close the heat rolled towards them in heavy hot waves that filled his lungs and almost had him coughing in discomfort. The sweat on her face made her shine like a star.

Loki, of course, was still standing in front of the dragon, staring steadily into the dragon as if nothing had happened at all, though he had the telltale glint of shielding encasing him. The dragon seemed to relax now, laying on the grown like a cat might though its eyes were still caught up in Loki's. Harry wasn't entirely clear on the specifics, but it was obvious that Loki had won and that Hermione was tuning in to what was Harry was starting to suspect was a resoundingly everyday lecture from her friend. "Come here now," Loki said, his voice ringing.

Hermione paused for scarcely a moment, then pulled out her wand and made some complicated motions, shielding charms made so swiftly (and nonverbally!) that Harry couldn't even tell whether they were things he had learned in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Probably not. Harry felt very small; while he had been whining he hadn't even looked up to see that Hermione was _soaring_ on her own, in a way she never could if her feet were on the ground in the everyday tedium of their appointed classes; this stranger had swept her off her feet into some intellectual wonderland where everything was once more possible, like how magic had seemed when he had first come to Hogwarts.

Harry hadn't even seen it, until now. He watched with a touch of envy, finding himself abruptly resigned to the fact that _he would never know this_ but now suddenly wanting it, wanting what Hermione was reaching out and taking with every step she took towards Loki, a dragon, and an adventure that could not be caged. He had never really wanted to be Hermione before, except maybe to get his coursework done a bit faster, but now her longing to know was suddenly tangible in a way that Harry could taste and hunger for but knew he could never swallow.

"Now you," Loki said, his voice almost too quiet to hear.

Hermione seemed to steel herself a bit, but then stepped right into the line of sight between the dragon and Loki. Long, long minutes passed. There were no fireballs this time, though Harry watched the trio intently. Every muscle in Loki ow seemed oriented towards Hermione as she was rendered the subject of his intense gaze, though she didn't appear to notice him so focused was she in turn. He seemed protective, even possessive, and even Harry could not help but notice how impossibly handsome he seemed in the dark, almost godlike in how... how statuesque he seemed, how unreal and not of this earth.

Harry could certainly see the girls giggling over him, in the way they giggled over Viktor Krum or other larger-than-life figures. Did Hermione giggle? Despite the lighthearted nature of their banter, they seemed entirely too... serious for that, and Harry felt that lead weight in his chest sink further yet until he was thoroughly pinned to his place. They hadn't done anything very romantic since Harry had started playing at voyeur, but then again, Hermione was hardly a typical girl; perhaps taming a dragon was her (their?!) idea of romantic. It wouldn't be the strangest thing he had learned about her this evening.

The dragon seemed to accept Hermione where it lay, judging by the broad grin spreading across her face, and with considerable less fuss than with Loki. "Beautiful," she breathed, like one might repeat a prayer that had come true. "I hadn't known..."

"And now you do." Loki's voice was like a purr, obviously pleased with himself. His hand curled around Hermione's shoulder, the first bit of physical contact the two had had all night; Harry was again reminded of a cat, here kneading its claws contently on the nearest object that could provide suitable resistance. "I think she likes you."

"Only because I didn't make it a_ war_," Hermione replied, still gazing intensely into the dragon's eyes. Were they communicating somehow? "I just asked nicely. Told her if she let me in she'd be able to at least stretch her wings a bit, and that anything strong enough to cage her would be plenty strong enough to keep her eggs safe while she was gone. It's awful, how they have them tethered up, they can barely even _move_."

Loki smiled. "Clever," he said. "You make for a better wordsmith than I, I'd think."

"Yet you flatter so," Hermione shot back. She apparently felt comfortable enough to blink now, which she did, rapidly, eyes watering. "And I can't find it within me to return the favor half the time."

"You wound me." Loki smiled affectionately. Definitely a cat. A cat and its prey. Harry shivered. He didn't even know _how_ to talk to someone about how their not-boyfriend was creepier than hell, but he'd have to figure it out soon. "Shall we fly now? Then my flattery will be lost to the wind and you won't need to hear a word of it."

Her eyes were sparkling. "Yes," she said, "yes, _yes_. I can feel how to move the wings, the legs, it's so—so _intuitive_, really, you just need to step right in and it's all there, I don't even need to look at her as long as I keep concentrating on the connection. It's like an echo in me, of a whole other body, her heart beats so much more slowly than mine but I can feel it in my chest just below mine, her eyes, I can see through hers now as well, it's all _layered_ and-" She laughed. "It's so _lovely_. I didn't think you could **know** anything so intimately. There aren't words for any of this..."

"Of course not," Loki said quietly. There was a thoughtful look in his eyes that didn't seem unfriendly, but Harry was starting to simply not trust him on instinct by now. Loki took her by the arm and, after a gesture, waved the door to the cage open. "Power is a sweet thing," he said, "but not the only thing we must sup upon. Bitter truth we must not only taste but drink deeply of, and the sourness of lies that others feed us before we know what they are. This type of connection is... beautiful. You can get easily lost in it. To be a horse, for a time, running more wild and free than you ever could on two scrawny legs, or a bird, or a fish in a river—to be in another body, whether one you craft for yourself or one you borrow, is very deep and not to be taken lightly. It is more difficult with humans, as the mind becomes exponentially more complex, and a full sort of control is almost impossible."

"We call it _Imperius_," Hermione replied, obvious distracted by the dragon. She reached out her hand and touched the flank of the dragon, hesitating at first but then almost caressing it. "It's so strange, to touch myself," she said, and giggled a bit. A richer red than ruby, something that gleamed with its very own light as if there was a spark of dragonfire in every scale. "But anyway—it's considered Unforgiveable by our laws to do spellwork to directly control the actions of another human being. Animals, though are different... she's sentient, yes, in her own way, but it's not as... directed, as you felt when you were trying to get into my mind."

"Most animals minds are even less directed than that of a dragon," Loki said. "Muddled, confused, not really properly conscious of themselves. Like some people's heads, really, though they probably wouldn't like to hear that."

Here Hermione frowned, though still touching the dragon's flank. 'People are _still_ different," she said, but a little less certainly now. "But never mind that. Can we fly now?" Her voice ached with longing. She was so full of emotions, so few of which he had ever heard before this night. Were all people like this, little dolls stacked up in each other that needed to be cracked open in order to see what was actually inside?

"Certainly," Loki said generously, and after a gesture with his hand—did he do nothing with his wand?-he slung himself over the back of the dragon, legs on either side firmly pressing into the flanks. Maybe Loki wasn't actually a student, but rather one of the dragon tamers, like Charlie Weasley. Maybe she had met Loki at the Burrow, maybe Loki was some colleague of Charlie's... It didn't seem likely even to him, but Harry couldn't think of anything that could explain any of this. Loki then offered his hand to Hermione. "My lady," he said, using that strange old affect like out of one of the Austen novels he had had to read at his Muggle primary school.

Hermione laughed and cast a little levitation charm on herself, resulting in a somewhat ungainly but otherwise successful seating on the dragon's back directly in front of Loki. "I can manage quite fine, thank you," she said primly, but her eyes had laughter in them. She leaned forward, her head almost brushing against the spines that formed a sort of mane. "I'm not sure what you did, but the Cushioning Charms are actually quite nice. Thank you for that."

Loki put his arms around Hermione's waist, looking smugly snug. "Better yet?"

Harry couldn't tell if it was a blush on her cheeks or the fire of the dragons all around them. "Quite," she said, and then the dragon _stood_, clumsy for a moment before beginning to walk. Once it had gotten out of the cage it then reared and Hermione gasped in delight, for a moment almost falling off but then finding her back tight against Loki's chest. The wings extended and then the dragon _roared_, the wings now flapping and filling the glade with hot wind. There was a great fireball, answered by the three still-caged dragons, and by the time Harry could open his eyes again they were gone.

Well then.

Harry waited, hours and hours and hours in the stiffly cold autumn night, abruptly woken out of his doze every time one of the dragons saw fit to breathe a bit more fire. If he wasn't invisible, he'd think they did it to torment him. To think, barely fifty feet from three dragons and shivering cold because he couldn't even remember a simple heating charm.

Harry really didn't feel like much of anything right now, other than miserably confused and feeling terribly marginalized in the life of who he had thought was his best friend. Did Ron have some sort of secret like going on as well, attending underground Wizarding chess tournaments now that he didn't have to be bothered with a halfway hero like Harry? What about Ginny, she had a whole secret life revolving around a possessed _notebook_ for a year and no one had noticed, maybe Fleur slew vampires in her off-hours and Cedric nursed orphan kittens, Harry wouldn't know either way until the answer stared him right in the face and that felt _profoundly_ awful, an acid eating away at his nerves with a sort of fatal steadiness he didn't much like to see.

Dawn was creeping in gray and shy by the time Loki and Hermione returned with their borrowed dragon. They were laughing as they dismounted and locked it back in its cage. Hermione could have just been out for a bit of midnight horseriding, she looked so comfortable now. And Loki... his eyes were glittering and Harry was afraid again.

"I'll see you tonight?" Hermione asked, all smiles though she yawned. "I really _do_ need to figure out something for Harry, and I don't think he'd be up for practicing something like this in advance..."

_The hell I would_, Harry thought, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he struggled to find alertness again.

"Of course," Loki said. "Perhaps I can teach you to swim next."

Hermione swatted at Loki's arm and started to walk away. "One thing at a time," she said, "there's still so much I need to learn even about dragons..."

"A succubus I name thee," Loki called after her, "forever hungering after the knowledge of men. Be glad I have the patience for you."

"Every night!" she called back, though her voice was strangely clipped at the end, right when she turned invisible. Did they mute themselves too, when they snuck about the castle?

Harry stirred from his resting place to follow her back into the castle, still unsure of what to do about her. Confront her, gather more information, he didn't know anything other than there was quite a bit that he didn't know, which was better than where he had been-

Except upon standing he found himself frozen to his spot. _Loki_. He was striding over to where Harry stood, looking—well, amused, but he had looked amused when he had proposed riding dragons, so the strange man being amused was a scary thing indeed. "I had rather hoped you'd stay," Loki said, whisking the Cloak off of Harry. "This is better. Cleaner." He fingered the fabric of the Cloak between his fingers. Harry wanted nothing more than to snatch it back from him but even his breathing was constricted, his chest incapable of anything but the smallest of movements. "Though I rather wish I could keep this toy for myself. It is a rare occasion I find something I cannot see through... though you'd be good quiet those footsteps of yours, and be grateful Hermione didn't hear you herself. Otherwise this would have gotten messy indeed."

Harry fought through the binding enchantment enough to move his jaw. "Don't you hurt her!" he blurted out.

"Only when she wants me to," Loki replied, his voice cool like cream. "And what a masochist our little lioness is. But you know that. Otherwise she wouldn't spend a minute more in this place." Loki's eyes were opaque, opal-like, greens and blues and grays that shifted about. Harry got an uneasy feeling that despite his appearance he wasn't entirely human. Vampire? He was pale enough and just as scary as he imagined them being, but they withered in fire... "But lets get back to you," Loki said, interrupting his thoughts, "as much as I'd love to wax lyrical on what I have planned for her. You're altogether too nosy, trying so helplessly to help your friends; I'll consider myself blessed you don't follow your observations with coherent thoughts."

Loki circled about Harry. Harry tried to open his mouth to protest only to find his lips sewn clean shut. _A cat and its prey_, the thought echoed from before, but even if Hermione didn't know what Loki was, at least she was allowed to speak up.

"I'm impressed you managed to stumble your way here," Loki continued after a few moments, "but alas I cannot take any of your toys without Hermione throwing a fuss and looking suspiciously my way. She does that quite enough already, and to think of how _upset_ she'd be if you were compromised in any way, she'd be down her second best source of good trouble." Loki pursed his lips. He seemed to be enjoying this quite a bit. Harry wondered what he was, and whether he'd even get to know before Loki did whatever he was going to do to make things 'clean'.

"Modifications, perhaps," Loki continued, eyeing him lazily, "I'll be needing to remove myself from the clever little map of yours, maybe give you even more of an aversion to the library than you already seem to possess." He plucked at the Cloak thoughtfully. "And this is a curious thing indeed, though clearly you don't know what it is. What wonderful circumstances are wasted on you, Harry James Potter. Hermione seems to think you'll be a great wizard one day, though perhaps you will be by these people's standards. Here be monsters, little Harry, best not wander where you don't belong..." Loki seemed to grow bored, though Harry could have stood to have a little more of that thoroughly confusing but monologue since now Loki captured Harry's gaze. A pressure was building in his forehead until he thought it would break, like what he got when he faced Quirrel a few years ago but sharper, so much sharper, like the incision of a scalpel as opposed to the blade of a broadsword. "Some memories will need to go, of course..."

When Harry awoke, it was with a pounding headache in his own bed. Almost lunchtime! He groaned and rolled out of bed. Still wearing yesterday's robes, even, walking with Hagrid had tired him out more than he had thought...

At lunch, Hermione plucked a twig out of his hair. "Thought dragons would be more interesting than class this morning?" she teased, though her voice was a low whisper in his ear.

"I wish," Harry said, rubbing his forehead and looking desperately for coffee. "Maybe I'd have an idea of what to do then. Say, do you think you could bring the books you were talking about up the Common Room instead?..."

Later still, in Defense Against the Dark Arts, Moody held him after. "Have a plan yet?"

A vague thought struck Harry, of what it would be like to fly with dragons. Probably not his cup of tea, but he was good with brooms... "Yes," he said slowly, his brain foggy but a thought crystallizing out of it. "Yes, I think I do."

**A/N**:

Updated 3/6/13.

Questions, comments, queries, concerns? Review below! I dearly love constructive criticism, and it would be particularly valued as this is the first proper short story I've done. Does it stand well on its own? Yet, do its tie-ins to Aphelion, for those also reading the novel version of this from Loki and Hermione's perspectives, also make sense? Does how I've written Harry feel in character, given this time period in his life? I didn't mean to be so _mean_ to Harry, but at this point in the books he really hasn't quite found himself (and this was one of the more angst-ridden time periods in his life) but—did it make sense? And, despite not being in either Loki or Hermione's heads, do they feel in character despite not necessarily knowing the trajectory that brought them here? Feedback much appreciated!

The original prompt, from the 200th reviewer of Aphelion: "...I'd like to request a Loki/Hermione pairing. There just not enough of them yet. :P A day-in-the-life fic where they're happier/content... as can be for Loki/Hermione and not worrying about wars and such. Interactions with other characters with both Loki and Hermione recommended but not necessary. Can be set in Aphelion or totally different universe."


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